If the promotional spots for America Unearthed are to be believed, tonight Scott Wolter gets taken in by a known nineteenth century hoax and spends the hour assuming it’s true. I can’t believe that the producers of the show are that stupid, but I can’t really put anything past them. I guess I’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s talk about Lovecraft. The following are some more or less coherent thoughts, but not really a true analysis since I haven’t had the time to develop my ideas more fully.

This week the New York Review of Books published a meditation on H. P. Lovecraft by Minnesota author Charles Baxter, who writes primarily literary fiction. Baxter’s point of reference was the publication of Leslie S. Klinger’s New Annotated Lovecraft (Liveright, 2014), unread by me, which collects several of Lovecraft’s most popular stories and exhaustively explains their origins and allusions in marginal notes. Baxter is not a fan of Lovecraft, seeing in him something less than the literary, but he is also no fan of those who like Lovecraft. He describes his experience teaching English to antisocial young men who like to write violent fantasy fiction dominated by themes of alienation and rage:

The authors of these horrific fictions sit in the back of the classroom avoiding eye contact, rarely speaking to anybody. Shabbily dressed, fidgety, tattooed, hysterically sullen, they are bored by realism and reality when not actively hostile to both. When asked about their reading, they will gamely mumble the usual list of names: Neal Stephenson, Stephen King, J.G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick. But the name that I have heard most often mentioned in these litanies is that of H.P. Lovecraft, whom they revere. He is their spirit-guide.

Tell us how you really feel, Chuck! There are two different threads at work here, both related to elitism. Baxter clearly sees Lovecraft a popular rather than literary writer, one whose fiction is—gasp!—not realistic and therefore less worthy than, let’s say, Baxter’s. Like Edmund Wilson, whom Baxter cites, he sees Lovecraft as a minimally talented hack who happened to hit upon a few good themes. Indeed, the very concept of annotating Lovecraft is for Baxter itself a shocking affront to literature: “…the effect is like having a friendly and obliging professor whispering learned asides all through a blood-spattered grind-house movie.” If there is one thing that I tried to stress in my own history of the horror genre, Knowing Fear, it is that the line between the literary and the popular is arbitrary and changeable, and that as much if not more is to be learned from popular fiction as from canonical literature. It’s hard to remember now, but the works of “literary” horror Baxter cites--Frankenstein and The Monk among others—were originally scandalous popular works condemned by their early critics as mere popular entertainments unfit for the literary mind. I’ve collected several such notices in my anthology A Hideous Bit of Morbidity, which is essentially an extended cri de coeur from cultural elites that new voices continuously challenge the elite definition of high culture. The other thread is Baxter’s distaste for Lovecraft fans, whom he stereotypes for, in essence, participating in the so-called geek culture. It’s clear that Baxter sees Lovecraft as of a piece with his modern fans, and certainly not a member of the real elite—he dings Lovecraft for never traveling to the font of real culture, Europe (but fails to note Lovecraft’s many trips across the U.S. and to Quebec). He similarly accuses Lovecraft of being “a stranger to joy” and obsessed with writing only of his horror of sex, though he does allow that Lovecraft’s stories are also about blaspheming Christianity, presumably also because of the Christian emphasis on chastity. In fact, he claims that Lovecraft’s only worthwhile literary theme is of flawed resurrection, that the Christian promise of the revival of the flesh is a horror. If I read this right, Baxter accidentally justified the existence of zombie movies. Baxter, though, is one of the old fashioned style of literary analysts, and he chooses to follow Stephen King in reducing Lovecraft’s monsters to Freudian readings, quoting King as calling Cthulhu a vagina dentata and asserting that in “The Thing on the Doorstep” Asenath Waite has, in essence, penis envy. (He seems to miss the suggestion that she doesn’t actually appear in the story at all, and that her father inhabited her vacant body.) But I am going on too long about something that doesn’t really say very much at all. Baxter concludes by arguing—wrongly I would say—that Lovecraft’s fiction is not frightening because World War II and modern atrocities have rendered such horrors “quaint.” Instead, he sees Lovecraft as an adolescent trapped in a man’s body, one who raged against reality and refused to put aside childish things to become a truly adult literary writer. I think that Baxter errs in failing to consider Lovecraft’s horrors as a reflection of the mythic, not the literal. For someone who is willing to read Lovecraft’s work as an extended travesty of Christianity, the refusal to consider its themes and impact on the level of myth is confusing. In the end, Baxter recognizes that there is power in Lovecraft’s fiction, but—like, we must assume, the other parts of geek culture like comic books and video games—an essentially “childish” power.

C.Baxter's definition is too narrow. All writers are trapped in
perpetual adolescence. Toss in a few playwrights, too. We
must lump F. Scott Fitzgerald in with Kit Marlowe in with Poe.
Lovecraft is in good company. As to why Kay Gatsby has to
be lionized for the full novel, teenage identity questing hints.
Marlowe is edgy in any translation. Edgar A. Poe is subliminal.

"which collects several of Lovecraft’s most stories and exhaustively explains their origins and allusions..."

'most and stories appears to omit a word, possibly 'most popular stories' or 'most interesting stories'

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Shane Sullivan

12/13/2014 07:25:27 am

To his credit, Baxter does pick up on the symbolic connection between Lovecraft's use of alien horror and his contempt for non-whites. That, at least, is a fair criticism.

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EP

12/13/2014 07:32:25 am

"To his credit... That, at least, is a fair criticism."

I don't get it. What are you trying to say?

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Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 07:49:22 am

He means that Baxter's criticism of Lovecraft's racism is valid, even if most of what Baxter says is junk.

EP

12/13/2014 07:58:38 am

Why's is it "to his credit", then?

EP

12/13/2014 08:04:06 am

Oh, I see - I read "does" as "doesn't". I'm an idiot!

EP

12/13/2014 07:26:29 am

“…the effect is like having a friendly and obliging professor whispering learned asides all through a blood-spattered grind-house movie.”

Hey! I do it all the time! Fuck you, Charles Baxter! ;)

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EP

12/13/2014 07:43:38 am

Just read Baxter's piece in its entirety. Jason was really kind to him, actually... What unbearably pretentious pseudo-intellectual drivel!

(And I'm not even a fan of Lovecraft, really...)

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spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 07:45:18 am

The only useful thing about that review is that it lays bare the real issue, and that is classist distaste for geek culture. I think it would be going too far too accuse it of ableism, but like a lot of parody or criticism of geeks and nerds, it's hard to not see stereotypes of the autism spectrum. But there is a valid critique of fandom that all too often becomes a highly classist defense from the barbarians at the gates.

The two big points of the review have already been made, and made more successfully. The critique of narrow-minded obsessive fandom was made as noted by Wilson who compared the Lovecraft cultists to the already existing Baker's Street Irregulars, and who I am sure would have had a thing or two to say about the Tolkein loremongers.

The other major critique, one made not as openly here, is the impact of obsessive fans of a certain kind of fiction, on the larger cultural sphere but especially on science fiction. An argument has been made, and certainly is stronger now, that the pulp revival has strangled science fiction. Moorcock made the argument in Epic Pooh in 1978

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Pooh

that Tolkein and others were killing more progressive science fiction and fantasy literature. Moorcock is too focused on a particular kind of politics. But if you broaden the discussion beyond Tories vs. socialist politics, the situation is much clearer now. By mainstreaming a certain kind of pew-pew adventure fiction that was largely consumed either by children or a small subculture of obsessive fans, the broad adoption of comfort food science fiction and fantasy starves the potential for sf, weird fiction, etc.

In the wake of the turmoil of the 1960s as well as in sync with the appeal to youth and nostalgia sold to Baby Boomers at every stage of their life since they started turning 21, pulp of all kinds began a massive renaissance in the 1970s. Movies turned to the blockbuster, and the first major summer blockbusters we now think of as having created the modern movie are telling: Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, all are super pulpy (Jaws is at least as much the "Weasels Ripped My Flesh!" sweats as it is Moby Dick). Comics had a renaissance. Role playing games emerged and had a major impact on video games and now film (don't tell me all those burnouts in Baxter's review don't play D&D, you know they do). And Lovecraft was a significant part of that renaissance. Lovecraft scholars mostly got their start at that time, and talk of the Lovecraft Renaissance, and his work influenced a lot of those comics and games, and to a lesser extent films (whereas Jason has noted in his various publications the impact on occulture at the exact same time, so one could argue "In Search of ..." etc. as another manifestation of all this).

The geek culture we have today is the second generation of that pulp renaissance, and it has been embraced both culturally and financially, taking almost all the air out of the room for thoughtful sf. Star Wars has been criticized since its inception for torpedoing the growth of thoughtful sf, in essence taking the technology of 2001 and telling the same old planetary romances of the sort Lovecraft complained about himself in his letters.

It's a valid criticism, I'm just not sure that spitefully attacking the kid in the black t-shirt in the back of the class is really the most productive way of voicing it.

One way this approach fails is by ignoring why Lovecraft is comfort food. It shouldn't be. It's vision is bleak and as noted it appeals to a certain kind of paranoid mindset. Lovecraft only becomes comforting pulp because it has been made that way by influence on games, comics, and other media. And as Baxter's review makes so obvious, that's the real target, and possibly a fair target but one that is not actually addressed.

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EP

12/13/2014 08:17:39 am

"Epic Pooh" strikes me as quite silly. It's not as cringingly bad as this Baxter piece, but still...

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Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 08:42:11 am

I find it as grating as the little I've read of C.S. Lewis' apologetics (which I find very grating indeed). And although I see spookyparadigm's point, I have a growing dislike of literary criticism in general (sorry, Jason!). I still feel that there ought to be some way of determining that, say, The Wire is better than Twilight. But the more I get into the details, the more pointless and depressing the whole exercise feels. Every story in existence has somebody to criticize it, so if I read all the criticism I would end up feeling that no story is good enough. I just avoid the stuff now.

spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 08:53:59 am

That was my initial reaction. It reads like a narrow political screed of "Stop having fun and take MY politics seriously in your fiction!"

But I think if you back the frame up a bit for a wider perspective, the message is a lot more understandable. If you think speculative or non-realist fiction has the capability to really say something, watching all of the eyes being grabbed by products with fanbases who obsess not over ideas or possibilities but over starship blueprints and costume details of "worlds" that are routinely called, even by fans to be "franchises" and have been bought by the world's largest media corporations, material that is exploited into a billions of dollars a year industry of toys and games etc., has to be appalling.

Regarding Moorcock's "Epic Pooh," I'm sure someone must have tackled the post-apoc and zombie genres in the same vein for America. If Tolkein et al were riffing off of Little England as a form of conservative escapism, surely the same can be said for all the Western-trope-rich post-apoc and zombie movies that very much feed into the anti-societal libertarian streak that's been growing in America since the first successes of the civil rights movement half a century ago, that spawned the "survivalist" movement in the wake of the last major legal successes of that movement, and that just happened to become a full political movement with the election of a black president literally smeared and figuratively painted as a non-citizen.

EP

12/13/2014 09:55:31 am

@ NtCdSG: I share your feelings about Lewis, but that doesn't make Moorcock's piece any less silly. Besides, Lewis was a legit literary scholar (albeit the definition of bland Oxonian mediocrity), while Moorcock just comes across as trying to sound smarter and more learned than he really is, and failing miserably. His essays is filled with absurd claims that are strictly quite independent of his main message.

"If you think speculative or non-realist fiction has the capability to really say something, watching all of the eyes... has to be appalling."

How is this different in principle from any other kind of cultural commodity? Where is the outrage when Emily Dickinson (probably the most intellectually creative poet in the English language) is reduced to a Hallmark card or (which is just as bad) to an icon of kneejerk village feminism? Where is it when Laurence Sterne is reduced to a vapid and pretentious indie flick? Is the difference that less money is made in my cases? But why should that matter? More importantly, how does it redeem ignorant and self-righteous ramblings like "Epic Pooh"?

And as for the point of your second paragraph, I think (a) that your generalization is too sweeping (what about Romero, "The Road", "28 Days/Weeks Later", etc.?), and (b) even ignoring that, "feeding into" is too slippery to make any empirical points unless you mean something precise by it.

EP

12/13/2014 09:59:57 am

The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.

--Ezra Pound, 1920

spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 10:08:20 am

Re: Dickinson vs. Star Wars

I think that's sort of the point from reading Baxter's review. The issue isn't so much that the material is being turned into pablum, but that by doing so it increases the importance (financial and cultural) of icky Tories and aspergic unwashed nerds [sarcasm]. Hallmark making a dollar off Dickinson is akin to your favorite band selling their song to a car commercial. But sf going from LeGuinn to Disney's franchise means the people who care about light saber fighting style 1 vs. fighting style 2 (I know these exist but have no idea what they mean and don't want to) or for that matter the difference between Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep, have taken over the field (again, I'm not entirely in agreement with this argument, I'd be one of those unwashed nerds, but I see the point).

Re: Zombies and post-apoc. I think this would need to be a bottom-up ethnographic not top-down literary study. See how "zombies" and "prepping" get used in the survivalist/tactical/whatever-we're-calling-militias-and-radicals-today subculture. I mean, how exactly is Romero's liberal politics, criticism of consumerism, etc., exactly surviving in how people consume zombie fiction and perform it today, or use it code words in political speech (feel free to google zombie and code word, but maybe don't open the links at work)?

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 10:16:56 am

I wasn't defending Moorcock, by any means. I'm saying that I find him and Lewis equally obnoxious.

EP

12/13/2014 10:59:10 am

I recently noticed, and rolled my eyes at, the fact that "zombie readiness" is a legit section of firearms and survivalist marketing... I have no idea how that happened (a bottom-up study is called for, like you said), but I sure don't see it as emerging from the same place as Hollywood zombies, pop-Apocalypticism, etc. Indeed, they simply must be incapable of detecting the anti-capitalist, anti-war, environmentalist, and other allegories in zombies and the rest of it.

Your evaluation of my Dickinson example strikes me as historically myopic (we weren't alway living in the age of mass communication). And I don't see what the dialectical punchline of your comparison of Dickinson to lightsaber prople is supposed to be. My original point was precisely that I don't see why I should be more (or at all) upset about them.

On the other hand, I can list concrete reasons why I'm upset about the Dickinson case. Starting with the fact that my lady friends aren't expecting "Emily Dickinson" to be followed by "dynamic perspectival geometry".

Not to belabor it, but how are you saying *that*? I thought you were saying, in effect, that you wouldn't go as far as they do, but that you see where they are coming from.

And how is Baxter "channeling" Wilson, anyway? (Aside from also dumping on Lovecraft and people who like him too much, that is...)

Shane Sullivan

12/13/2014 10:39:28 am

I don't mean to pile on Michael Moorcock, but am I to understand that the author of the *Elric* stories, with their Freudian allegories and goofy portrayal of Albinism, was complaining about vapid fantasy fiction...?

For the record, I'm a fan of Moorcock's fiction, but come on now.

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spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 10:45:48 am

No, he was complaining about the political flavor of one kind of vapid fantasy vs. another.

That's why I don't like his essay, but think that there is a key concept in it worth looking at stripped of personal jackassery. I feel much the same about Charles Stross, who writes some really interesting essays related to science and science fiction, but at times undercuts himself by being an ass about it. It's a pretty common phenomenon (see also Harlan Ellison, or frankly almost any author routinely given the space to opine and the likelihood of an audience).

EP

12/13/2014 11:02:17 am

I've undercut myself by being an ass on occasion. Shocking, I know :)

Shane Sullivan

12/13/2014 12:39:57 pm

"That's why I don't like his essay, but think that there is a key concept in it worth looking at stripped of personal jackassery."

I can understand where he and Baxter are coming from, but I don't share their opinion even on a conceptual level. This is partly because I'm an artist, and I live in constant fear of being chastised for my own work, which makes me reluctant to get too nasty toward anyone else's. Also, even if you think a piece of literature is utter garbage, I sincerely don't believe that its popularity should piss a person off that much, but to each his own.

EP

12/13/2014 12:57:46 pm

Fact: Most authors who wish to be seen as "highbrow" secretly dream of having their work turned into a Julia Roberts movie. And most of them are every bit as formulaic and shallow as that requires.

Anyone who is interested in these debates (even as a bystander) would probably find interesting Dwight Macdonald's "Highbrow and Lowbrow".

Mark L

12/13/2014 08:15:52 pm

I'm not sure you're understanding the word "fact" there. The words you were looking for were "baseless supposition". It's weird to read that sort of ugly anti-intellectualism coming from someone as smart as you. Do you just really not like any sort of fiction? Because to say "highbrow authors want their books turned into Julia Roberts movies" is to say that there's no real difference between, say, Danielle Steele and Nabokov. Which I strongly disagree with.

To correct another issue that seems to have drifted far from its original point, the criticism of Michael Moorcock's piece. The best science fiction asked interesting questions, and was a way to have discussion of large and difficult topics in "public". With the rise of apolitical pulp science fiction , it's much more difficult to find a market for the sort of challenging stuff that Moorcock is talking about. Seems fair enough - I'm no particular fan of Moorcock's fiction myself but his point seems solid.

EP

12/14/2014 07:58:16 am

Let's look some other words: 'most', 'wish' and 'seen'. As in "most authors who wish to be seen as highbrow". Which is what I said. My statement does no refer to anyone else. It is admittedly my opinion, but is far from "baseless".

In particular, I did not say "highbrow authors want their books turned into Julia Roberts movies". Read what I said more carefully. And even if I did say that, how would we get denial of difference between Steele and Nabokov from it? (Some of the greatest writers deliberately wrote for the mass market in order to make money. So what?)

And even if we could get it from that thing I didn't actually say, how do you get "ugly anti-intellectualism" from it? Many respectable intellectuals denied that there is any "real difference" in quality between works of art. I do not, but there is nothing anti-intellectualist about the view. In fact, I bet intellecutals are mostly the ones holding it.

I like many kinds of literature. In this thread, I have already mentioned two authors I like: Sterne and Dickinson... So... Frankly, I don't get where your post is coming from...

spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 11:16:01 am

Excuse my ignorance. While I was familiar with Wilson's haterade on Lovecraft, when I wrote the above I was not aware he had also shit even more thoroughly on Tolkien.

http://www.jrrvf.com/sda/critiques/The_Nation.html

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EP

12/13/2014 11:48:31 am

He shat on lots of overrated popular authors. Like Kafka.

Edmund Wilson was awesome like that.

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 12:09:39 pm

No, he was a literary critic, which is a very low form of life.

EP

12/13/2014 12:27:25 pm

You're being sarcarstic, NtCdSG, right? Otherwise... like... how much Wilson have you read?...

You should read Edmund Wilson's essays on Houdini or the Sacco & Vancetti trial. Neither one is on literary matters and you'd see a totally different side of the man :)

Also, not all criticism is negative. Many of the best literary critics, both academic and journalistic, wrote mostily positive pieces. Nothing deepends one's appreciation of a work of art than insightful positive criticism of that work.

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 01:41:51 pm

Fair points. Forgive my outburst. My growing allergy to literary criticism, or at least the negative kind, makes me irritable. As a result, I'm increasingly moving away from fiction and toward nonfiction, which isn't as subjective. Which is why I probably shouldn't have commented on this blog post in the first place.

EP

12/13/2014 02:00:43 pm

"nonfiction, which isn't as subjective"

I hate to burst your bubble, but... :)

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

12/13/2014 02:14:53 pm

Oh, I know there are still plenty of arguments about nonfiction. But for whatever reason, I find studying history, even with all its academic disagreements, less uncomfortable.

Cathleen Anderson

12/13/2014 11:06:44 am

Considering how many of the gamers out there are 50 and over (including me)...

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Kal

12/13/2014 11:19:34 am

Epic Pooh came out in 1978, several months to a year after the first Star Wars, and the book does not refer directly to that film. It's more about children's fantasy and Tolkein. A later 1989 draft might have included it but does not say it. (wikipedia summary).

I had never heard of this book before today.

As for geeky science fiction, that has been around far longer. The old serials of the late 1930s like Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers, Batman, Superman. The Spiirit, The Shhadow, and the like, were all examples of science fiction fantasy. They did not destroy the genre. They are the beginning of the genre. Although one can argue Metropolis (the silent movie) was one of the first movies of this type. Comic book and pulp fantasy seems to have originated in the US during the old west, with the dime novels of heroic gunslingers. Star Wars is little more than an evolution of the cowboy western, the Hidden Fortress, and Flash Gordon. Star Trek seems like it started as Wagon Train meets Forbidden Planet and went from there. Scifi seems to be an extension of the western.

Tolkien though is apples and oranges to that. Pooh inaccurately makes a connection. The Hobbit and the like were meant to be ancient fantasy, more like Beowulf meets King Arthur. They're fantasy, not science fiction. The difference is obvious. In order for it to be scifi there has to be aliens and spaceships.

Ancient Aliens and Finding Bigfoot thus would be considered fantasy fiction with some science fiction tossed in.

What a lot of Pooh.

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spookyparadigm

12/13/2014 11:32:28 am

Science fiction in even the narrowest definition goes back to at least Wells and Verne, and I've seen definitions that go back farther. And much of the reason the Golden Age gets defined that way is that it was considered to have begun to rise above its pulp roots.

Of course, the Golden Age was itself then scapegoated as old fashioned by the literary-focused New Wave. Can't say it's terribly surprising that a fan-driven reactionary nostalgic return to pulps soon became the hot ticket.

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Clint Knapp

12/13/2014 02:20:42 pm

Wow. I should've known this one was going to turn into an enormous discussion by well-read and thoughtful people. I've enjoyed everything so far and don't even have much to add that hasn't been covered.

I would, however, consider pushing the definition of science fiction back a little bit further. Certainly Wells and Verne became the templates for modern sci-fi, but I'm curious how one might take Gulliver's Travels into the equation.

Swift's 1726 travelogue parody is laden with political discourse and satire which dominate most discussions (and certainly the annotated editions such as the 1946 printing I have on my shelf), but is also absolutely saturated with standards of science fiction as well. Particularly so in the sort of hybrid sci-fi/fantasy genre we see filling shelves these days where magic and technology collide.

His Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians are thoroughly in the fantasy camp of elves and giants, but Laputa is the one that always struck me the most solidly sci-fi. A flying city built on adamantine, levitated by magnetic field manipulation, and devoted to technology and mathematics in the 18th century? Though it devolves quickly into the absurd (recall experiments to extract sunlight from plants, or mix paint by smell), it could also be said to have invented the very idea of the military airstrike nearly two-hundred years before we even had planes as the Laputians rained rocks down on enemy cities.

Even the quirky tale of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos could potentially be read as a sort of anthropological science fiction wherein humans (yahoos) never evolved passed their base nature and horses became a highly-intelligent species.

Anyway, I know well the book's largely considered more political satire than anything. Swift made his name on the stuff. I simply tend to look past much of the period-specific commentary, or perhaps not deep enough to catalogue it all, and enjoy the surface story more thoroughly than the intrigue underneath it. On the surface, at least, it's a rich display of trends one usually equates with the sci-fi genre.

What is Laputa if not the very image of the oppressive alien overlords in the sky, raining judgement down on their lessers and sending their women out to hybridize the world, after all?

EP

12/13/2014 02:35:43 pm

I think you're pretty much spot on about Gulliver's Travels. Except this part: "it devolves quickly into the absurd (recall experiments to extract sunlight from plants, or mix paint by smell)". This is actually satire of what Swift considered impractical experimental science of his day - and isn't really that far off from what SCIENCE! looked like in the early 18th century :)

Shane Sullivan

12/13/2014 02:50:04 pm

I was going to bring up the Air Loom. I know it wasn't fiction in the mind of James Tilly Matthews, but that shit was Jules Verne before Jules Verne was even born.

I don't know of it having any influence on the arts until fairly recently, though:

http://www.theairloom.org/

EP

12/13/2014 02:52:37 pm

https://frostydrew.org/papers.dc/papers/paper-somnium/

Clint Knapp

12/13/2014 02:56:49 pm

Good point. I was looking more at Gulliver's PoV on the absurdity of Laputa than the objective view of 18th century science as a whole, an error indeed! Everything about the floating island-city serves so well to set it apart as a wholly alien culture, it's easy to get lost in the weird during that section of the book.

Science fiction as we know it began with Mary Shelley, not Wells or Verne. Science fiction and horror were inextricably linked from the beginning.

EP

12/16/2014 03:35:57 am

Except for all the above-mentioned authors who predate her...

a critic

12/20/2014 12:16:01 pm

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/lucians-true-history.html

Lucian of Samosata has a trip to the moon centuries
before Jules Verne has a cannon situated in Florida
hurling a small capsule up towards our captive satellite.
In 1628 a flock of geese flies the traveler to the moon!
Jules Verne's futuristic mechanized devices replaced
magic and/or folktales, his readers felt they were seeing
the future. It is that emphasis on the near horizon that
separates out Science Fiction as a genre, as it respects
basic ground rules. It brooks no internal contradictions.

Ben Franklin popularized a lightning rod, this gives
Mary Shelley a legitimacy. Her "monster" becomes
very real, and seems not to contradict science at all.

Only Me

12/13/2014 05:50:15 pm

Here's my take on Baxter and Moorcock; neither man's opinion is worth the time it took to read.

Baxter expresses his displeasure and fear through the written word just as Lovecraft did. Whereas Lovecraft worried about the non-white "other", Baxter's "other" is a group of people who don't share his worldview and tastes.

Moorcock knows he will be forgotten, while future generations will still be talking about Tolkien...and it shows. That he would disrespect A.A. Milne and Tolkien, while praising a one-trick pony like J.K. Rowling ("Redoubtable"? Really?), illustrates to me his insecurities concerning the skill of his own pen.

Both of their criticisms hinge on "certain authors suck because: popular." Perhaps they should better spend their time trying to understand why. They might learn something.

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EP

12/13/2014 05:53:13 pm

"insecurities concerning the skill of his own pen"

I bet he cries over prematurely spilt ink... if you know what I mean... :)

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Only Me

12/13/2014 06:01:59 pm

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink ;)

EP

12/13/2014 06:32:41 pm

You might even say his "pencil" is "2B soft"... And his "3-hole punch" got real low "sheet capacity"...

Residents Fan

12/14/2014 01:12:55 am

"Moorcock knows he will be forgotten..."

It's difficult to say which authors's work will survive, but Moorcock has been so influential on so many fantasy authors (Neil Gaiman,
China Mieville, Tad Williams, Jeff Vandermeer) and also
praised by people as diverse as Peter Ackroyd and John
Clute.

So I think it's fair to say people will still be remembering
Moorcock's work in the future.

I don't agree with Moorcock's negative views on Tolkien
or Lovecraft, but MM has interesting stuff to say
about science fiction and fantasy literature as a whole.

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EP

12/14/2014 03:37:59 am

I bet that all the people you mention will also be forgotten :)

Only Me

12/14/2014 06:31:18 am

I was just making a point when I wrote that, Residents Fan.

He chose to dismiss Tolkien and Milne to the realm of "comfort food", so I dismissed him in equal measure. I'm sure the number of people both authors inspired/influenced is rather impressive. That's why I have a huge problem with his negative criticism of their work, while holding up J.K. Rowling as part of the standard he prefers.

He should understand that the audience determines the longevity of any work. If he's frustrated by what he sees as the lowering standards of the audience, don't vent that frustration on authors who have earned their place in literary history.

If Moorcock wants to complain about science fiction or fantasy catering to certain demographics, then he should have selected examples that could arguably be linked to such demographics.

Shane Sullivan

12/14/2014 07:44:07 am

It's also difficult to make the case that the popularity of "comfort food" reduces the market for higher quality literature if one of his examples of quality is the immensely popular Rowling.

EP

12/14/2014 08:28:14 am

Shane, you've been on fire with excellent points recently!

Shane Sullivan

12/14/2014 10:16:48 am

Thanks. As they say, a broken clock is right twice a day.

EP

12/14/2014 10:18:41 am

...unless its hands are missing :P

Residents Fan

12/14/2014 01:30:29 am

To return to the main topic...Baxter doesn't seem to have
much interest in fantastic / "non-mimetic" literature, so he
was an odd choice for the NYRB to assign to review Lovecraft.

Surely someone like Michael Dirda would have been a
better fit.

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spookyparadigm

12/14/2014 05:30:55 am

Joshi weighed in

http://www.stjoshi.org/review_baxter.html

Some of his points are valid. Some continue to make him look like a crank and supports Baxter's complaints against the Lovecraft fanatics.

He starts off not on that page, but on his blog with

"If any readers wish to drop Mr. Baxter a line and give him a piece of your mind, you can reach him at: baxte087@umn.edu. So without further ado, here is my response at http://stjoshi.org/review_baxter.html."

Lovely.

Anyway, a few thoughtful bits are interspersed between overly defensive interpretations (Lovecraft wasn't a misogynist just because there are almost no women in his stories except an old murderous crone and a temptress whose body is traded around and eventually defiled until it is a shambling puddle of gristle) and appeals to authority (a handful of well-known authors like Lovecraft, so suck it).

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spookyparadigm

12/14/2014 05:39:10 am

Wait, I forgot a few.

The ugly inbred albino who is impregnated by a demon (though there are hints this took place using her father as a vessel) and then is killed off by her son.

The wife of a professor who bars him from seeing his family when he has a mental breakdown with shades of the one Lovecraft himself had in that undocumented ten years after he dropped out of highschool.

That's not counting the mummified ape-woman and the fish-girl who drive the author-surrogate protagonists mad.

Nor in his stories for others, the headless slave girl zombie. Or another temptress that leads an artist to ruin, a pushy and murderous survivor of Atlantis whose great sin is having a touch of black blood.

I think that's all of them who do something more substantial than hand a book to the protagonist.

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EP

12/14/2014 06:29:21 am

" Lovely."

Fact: If Baxter was an attractive female, he'd be getting death threats right now.

EP

12/14/2014 06:25:52 am

My two favorite sentences in Joshi's reply to Baxter are near the end. First:

"Lovecraft has even inspired a new philosophical movement, weird realism, led by the philosopher Graham Harman."

Graham Harman (who is quite highly regarded in hipster "theory" circles) wrote a book on Lovecraft which proposes to apropriate him for Harman's own, antecedently developed doctrine of "speculative realism". It can't really be called a movement in any meaningful sense. Harman's Lovecraft book is one of his least successful among academics.

"It is difficult to find, in the entire range of world literature, a writer who so unites critical acclaim and immense popular interest as H. P. Lovecraft."

Here, no comment is necessary. If taken literally, Joshi has just publicly testified to his own incompetence as a literary critic.

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Clint Knapp

12/14/2014 07:30:51 am

How nice of Joshi to once again spend entirely too much time promoting his own expertise. It reads like he's just upset that someone wrote an article about Lovecraft without consulting him first; or better yet, without offering him the job instead.

Sure am glad I didn't have any respect for the man to begin with. Even before his "I'm the most important!" rant, the only thing I ever found him useful for was his collection of Lovecraft's letters. His "mentor" worship was always more than a little creepy to me.

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Residents Fan

12/16/2014 04:51:54 am

It's odd that Joshi mentions W. P. Blatty, Clive Barker and Anne Rice* in his list of weird fiction authors, since in "The Modern Weird Tale" he criticised these authors' work as having little literary merit. So unless he has changed his mind on them, why,
in a letter defending a particular literary mode, include authors
in that mode that he doesn't consider worthwhile ?

Also: "I hear on almost a daily basis from figures in film, television,
video games, and comic books about adapting Lovecraft’s tales."

This is the same gentleman who complained on September 1 2014
about "our grotesque addiction to video games, cellphones, and other meaningless stimuli".

Why does Joshi not find the idea of Lovecraft's work being
turned into "meaningless stimuli" problematic anymore?

* FWIW: I don't consider Blatty and Rice's work to be
of much merit, but I do share Ramsey Campbell
and David G. Hartwell's high regard for Barker's fiction.

Residents Fan

12/15/2014 02:52:53 am

"He starts off not on that page, but on his blog with

"If any readers wish to drop Mr. Baxter a line and give him a piece of your mind, you can reach him at.....""

Oh for goodness' sake. The place to take issue with Baxter's review
of Lovecraft is the NYRB letters page, not e-mails sent
to the man's personal address. As they say in rugby,
"tackle the ball, not the main".

"It is difficult to find, in the entire range of world literature, a writer who so unites critical acclaim and immense popular
interest as H. P. Lovecraft."

Lovecraft does have considerable merit, but I can think
of numerous writers who would "unite critical and immense
popular interest" to a greater degree: Jane Austen, Walter Scott,
Edgar Allan Poe, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens,
Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Dashiell Hammett...

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EP

12/15/2014 06:49:53 am

...William Shakespeare :)

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EngLit

12/20/2014 11:50:45 am

Christopher Marlowe is too edgy to be just a "pop" phenom!
The dire sequence of white, red and black tents in one play.
His fascination with long dead monarchs in another play. To
be popular is to sugar coat reality. Horror needs a malaise
to feed on, a discontent to understate yet be aware of, and as
to Science Fiction, we have our Utopias, and our Dystopias.

And who were not writing what we would today define as recognizable modern science fiction. Gulliver's Travels, for example, is satirizing what we'd now call scientific concepts of his day, but he's doing so in a fantastical context. If we're going to go that far afield, why not use Kepler's Somnium, Milton's Paradise Lost, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Dante's Divine Comedy, or Homer's The Odyssey? All of those works have more elements used in modern science fiction than Gulliver's Travels.

The difference between all of these works (including Gulliver) and Shelley's work is that Frankenstein and The Last Man are the first stories used wholesale for their scientific ideas and plots, *because* they're scientific, and not because there's a story idea writers like that's unrelated to the scientific aspect of their story (or is now considered fantasy). Mary Shelley's work is used in exactly the same way that Verne and Wells' work is used in modern science fiction. This is not true of earlier works sometimes cited as the First Science Fiction Story.

I just find it curious that in everybody's haste to find that First Science Fiction Story, so many people skip right over Shelley to pick some earlier male author who is more obscure and whose work is not nearly as on genre point, or some later male author who is no more seminal than Shelley. Not saying Gulliver is obscure (yes, I've read Swift), but it's not as universally known, especially today, as Frankenstein. And while not everyone will know The Last Man, most people post-Cold War and zombocalypse craze will instantly recognize the plot. I bet I could come up with half a dozen Shelley-inspired genre show plots and premises on television right now, or very recently, right off the bat. Can you say that for Gulliver?

I think I'm gonna go with Brian Aldriss and Stephen King on this one.

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EP

12/16/2014 07:22:46 am

"I just find it curious that in everybody's haste to find that First Science Fiction Story, so many people skip right over Shelley to pick some earlier male author who is more obscure and whose work is not nearly as on genre point, or some later male author who is no more seminal than Shelley."

LOL

Something tells me that nothing I say is going to make a dent, so I won't bother wasting my breath.

Sure. Because answering several paragraphs of an argument you don't like with condescending one-liners makes you look *so* erudite.

Something tells me you're not worth wasting breath on, either. Good thing I was just writing on the Internet and didn't have to waste any.

EP

12/16/2014 07:55:12 am

Well, if you insist...

"who were not writing what we would today define as recognizable modern science fiction."

Except no one else in this thread seemed to have objected to describing Swift's work (or Kepler's work, in case you noticed my link to it) as science fiction. We weren't making further distinctions, like the one between "modern" and "non-modern" science fiction implied by your comment.
"stories used wholesale for their scientific ideas and plots, *because* they're scientific"

I have no idea what you're trying to say. What counts as being used for scientific ideas *because* they are scientific? How is Swift's satire not using scientific ideas *because* they are scientific, for example?

"Mary Shelley's work is used in exactly the same way that Verne and Wells' work is used in modern science fiction."

And what, exactly, is this "exactly the same way"? And what do you mean by "used"? Presumably, different people are capable of "using" a given work in different ways...

"I just find it curious that... so many people skip right over Shelley to pick some earlier male author"

It's because we're all a bunch of sexist male chauvinists, right?

"who is more obscure"

You think that Jonathan Swift is more obscure than Mary Shelley. LOL

"and whose work is not nearly as on genre point"

I think you need to consider the fact that the nature of the "genre point" is itself controversial. Without prejudice to your preferred account of it, I can only say that you haven't told us what it is.

"I bet I could come up with half a dozen Shelley-inspired genre show plots and premises on television right now, or very recently, right off the bat"

While you sound like you watch a lot more TV than I do, I must point out that you're changing the quesiton. We aren't talking about who is more influential (at present or overall). We are talking about who came first. It's like saying that Plato is the first philosopher because he has been more influential than any philosopher preceding him...

Clint Knapp

12/16/2014 03:14:32 pm

Well, since I'm the one who brought up Swift and Gulliver's Travels I'm going to go ahead and reinforce what EP said; it wasn't about influence, it was about chronology.

So yes, I did skip right over Shelley. Didn't even consider her, and it has absolutely nothing to do with seeking out a male author. She wrote Frankenstein in 1818; 92 years after Gulliver's Travels, and 210 years after Kepler's Somnium! By the way, EP, thanks for pointing that one out, I hadn't read it before and was quite pleasantly surprised.

No one's denigrating Shelley's influence at all, she simply doesn't factor into the conversation at hand. I would, however, point out that it's quite the leap in logic to assume she's more well known than Swift.

Frankenstein's monster may be more of a pop culture icon than hapless Gulliver, but let's be honest. Most pop culture gets it wrong. The monster itself becomes "Frankenstein", and is more famous for groaning and having neck bolts than any tangible resemblance to the ponderous philosopher pining for the meaning of existence that is the actual character in the novel.

Gulliver's Travels, however, is more or less faithfully represented (with edits for some of the more sexual content) in media across all age groups. You might not find Lemuel Gulliver masks at Halloween, and granted, most might not even know his first name, but I'm willing to bet more children are familiar with at least a semblance of a faithful Gulliver representation than they are anything close to a "real" Frankenstein's monster.

EP

12/16/2014 03:24:58 pm

Frankenstein (thanks largely to Hollywood's questionable adaptations and Shelley's popularity among feminists) is arguably less "obscure" in the English-speaking world. But everywhere else, it's easily trumped by Gulliver's Travels.

Also, whatever her significance as a trailblazer, Mary Shelley is really a minor author, who is of very little interest to anyone other than "genre" and feminist scholars. Jonathan Swift, on the other hand, is arguably the greatest satirist in the English language.

.

12/20/2014 12:46:26 pm

EP--- "It's because we're all a bunch of sexist male chauvinists, right?"

Luv! you like to ask rhetorical questions where U assume that U do
speak for everyone that may have better than 50/50 odds of soliciting
out a cosmic YES as an affirmative answer. Do be nice. She's been
published. She likes Lovecraft and horror, she has an anthology that
be an homage to HPL & A.E Poe, that advances the genre greatly!

EP

12/20/2014 03:37:30 pm

Since you have fortunately stayed out of this thread until now, I couldn't possibly have been referring to you, so your attention-seeking fake outrage is, as always, misplaced.

.

12/26/2014 02:23:44 am

duckie... you asked her a question where the only logical
answer is a YES and you do know you can be very sexist
and rude. i have never slammed into HPL or Poe, iadmit i
was holding back on things until i saw the SACRED BEE
episode, this gave me time to mull over things. i admire her.

EP --- she edits books. She is into HPL too. I liked her for
being able to stand up to you in your total rudeness yet
backing away from your happy tendency to flame a thread
dreadfully. i think Jason is premature;y wrong about the
HOLOCENE group that sees sand dunes and chevrons everywhere. I think he has been very harsh about Scott Wolter
but is correct on how he links sources together. We are at the
ten year mark of that horrid tsunami that took away too many
souls at about this time of the year. thanks to Jason i've found a
neat now googled up set of links to that group of scientists that
sees impact craters all over the place. I even found a paper
linking megabeast die-offs in Europe + N.A neatly together.
Jason is either very correct on a topic or very "misinformed"
and wrong, but he does often gives us his sources as to
WHY h thinks as he does. I admit it still wonder if you are
Jason in lurker mode rampaging about via a desire to police
or patrol the site here so as to have a certain "look" where appearance trumps content as the fight~club unwash'd are
throng & are drawn in to see academia's fur fly in merrie
abandon. as i said, S.W and Jason were most civilized
when both were at S.W's blog. i liked the thread I think
Columbus had maps. Someone said prior to most recently,
many scholars assumed he was semi-literate, and only
slightly better educated than his crew, hence no maps.
handing him maps & manuscripts makes his hairbrain'd stunt
less of a gamble. then again, Jason let my AMNH link stand
about the Basques. I read it as saying the Moors were here
too, to a 99.9% probability. Were i to salt up a hold of cod, i'd
want to be on a beach and not a badly rolling ship. I'm a New
Englander. Joan Pope went highly speculative, yes. Jason is
a landlubber out of Albany who writes well and has amassed
a lore. I toss out ideas, often and try to see where scholarship
is going. I miss Gunn. I did up a Snorri Sturluson posting on
very dead and ancient nobles becoming deified over time
because it gives an insight into Iceland in the 1200s and its
lack of isolation. This is unlike what happened due to the Black Death that hit in the middle of the 1300s...i think Gunn is correct. the KRS is legit, but its a riddle. its a mix of styles. Pagan or Viking runes did not alternate. Some of his MN stoneholes are ancient...

UTOPIA

12/20/2014 11:57:05 am

Is Sir Thomas More's fictional Utopia legitimately Science Fiction?
He tried to glimpse tomorrow by asking 'today" to be more perfect.

"He similarly accuses Lovecraft of being “a stranger to joy” and obsessed with writing only of his horror of sex, though he does allow that Lovecraft’s stories are also about blaspheming Christianity, presumably also because of the Christian emphasis on chastity. " that got me laughing out loud, thank you! whether this take on Lovecraft is true or not, it is a hilarious self contradictory concept of a personality to contemplate.

So he's got a horror of sex and hates Christianity for demanding chastity. Hah!

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.